Israel under fire (from own troops); US rabbis say Israel too worried about killing civilians (yes, they're out of their minds); & other craziness

1. Israeli Leaders Under Fire -- From Their Own Troops
Soldiers' protest over how abruptly their recent war ended begs the question: Has Israel lost its will to fight?
By Alan Kaufman (a veteran of the Israel Defense Forces & author of the novel "Matches")

ONE OF THE most unique protest movements in modern history has sprung up in the streets of Israel — a kind of military coup, potentially, by popular democratic means. Frontline reserve troops of the Israel Defense Forces, veterans of the recent debacle in Lebanon, are turning out in the streets, under the banner of the Israeli flag, calling for the resignations of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz. The soldiers are demanding the immediate creation of a commission of inquiry into the mismanagement of the war.

The protesters come from some of the most elite combat units in the army. They also have brought into their ranks the underclass civilians of northern Israel who, during the war, huddled in ill-smelling bomb shelters, cringing against the daily rain of Katyusha rockets and missiles — nearly 4,000 in all — launched by Hezbollah.

What makes the soldiers' movement so unique is that unlike most groups who assemble to protest a war, these demonstrators are not arguing that the war shouldn't have been waged. Rather, they're furious because it was stopped too soon , before they could dislodge Hezbollah from southern Lebanon. Israel's decision to pull back its troops has left the Iranian-backed terrorist army in place with an arsenal of about 8,000 missiles still aimed at Israel's northern cities and towns.

The soldiers want to know why their ground advance was mysteriously brought to a halt in mid-stride, leaving them to wait like sitting ducks, without a mission, while Hezbollah's superbly trained and disciplined fighters picked them off. They want to know why their field orders changed five, sometimes six times, a day, to no apparent purpose. They also demand to know why some of the troops went for three days and nights without food or water while under constant, withering fire.

In the final days of the conflict, with a U.N. cease-fire resolution close to passage, Israel made one last push with ground troops. But just when the army seemed on the verge of headway, officials brought that drive to an abrupt halt. In this last abortion, at least 24 soldiers died. This is the equivalent, with Israel's small population, of 1,200 Americans killed: a full-blown catastrophe.

The soldiers want to know why. Indeed, the entire nation is asking how 12,000 missiles could be hidden by Hezbollah within a highly developed network of seemingly indestructible, perfectly camouflaged bunkers, and how so many fell unimpeded on the people of northern Israel. Israelis don't understand how the government could fail to know that Hezbollah was equipped with high-tech surveillance devices so accurate that, according to DEBKAfile (debka.com), a website run by former Israeli intelligence officials, Hebrew-speaking operatives of the terrorist militia would on occasion call to Israeli troops and use the names of a unit's commanding officers for taunts such as: "Hey, where's your Lt. Yoram today?" According to the website, Hezbollah even eavesdropped on frontline troops speed-dialing home on their cellphones, gleaning intelligence from these conversations.

Beyond fury at the utter lack of preparedness and the seeming callousness of decision makers, something else is lurking beneath the soldiers' protest: a feeling that the war illuminated an absence of genuine values within the heart of the nation itself, underscoring some of the broad changes that have taken place in Israel in recent years.

This is a very different country from what it was 25 years ago. In recent times, Israel has, for instance, considered an initiative to transform the IDF from a conscript army (in which virtually the entire population was called upon to serve) into a volunteer force. Privatization of everything from public utilities to financing for urban infrastructure is underway. Rampant consumerism, addiction to popular culture and an American-style absorption with self to the exclusion of all else have left portions of the population ignored.

Such capitalist-style indifference to the fate of your fellow man may be fine for the fleshpots of New York and L.A., but it could be ruinous to the inhabitants of a land under perpetual military siege and facing the threat in the not-too-distant future of nuclear annihilation. Those who might be called on to offer up their lives against Islamic fundamentalist fanatics want at least to know that the state serves their interests. Instead, these days, they feel exploited.

Three hours after Hezbollah abducted reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, Halutz sold off more than 120,000 shekels (about $27,000) worth of stock in his portfolio, spurring widespread speculation that he didn't want to lose money in the event of a war. And then, when the war was underway, while troops perished needlessly in northern Israel and residents cowered in their shelters, citizens in Tel Aviv continued to lounge on beaches, dance in discotheques and obsess about their pedicures and tans.

That navel-gazing sector of Tel Aviv is now called, disdainfully, "The Bubble," and if the soldiers' movement is any indication, the bubble is about to burst.


2. Pressure for ban on cluster bombs as Israel is accused of targeting civilians -- by Ben Russell

Pressure for an international ban on cluster bombs has intensified as Israel stands accused of littering southern Lebanon with thousands of unexploded bombs in the final hours of its war against Hizbollah.

Campaigners yesterday accused the Israel Defence Force of leaving a "minefield" of deadly bomblets in villages and fields after firing hundreds of cluster shells, rockets and bombs across its northern border in the three days before hostilities ended earlier this month.

United Nations officials said that 12 people had been killed, and another 49 injured by such bombs since the war ended and that the casualty rate was likely to rise.

The Israeli government insists that it did not target civilians during the conflict and says all weaponry used was in accordance with international law.

Israel insists its use of weaponry is legal. However, anti-landmine campaigners have been pressing for an international ban on their use, arguing that cluster bombs are indiscriminate and their use in populated areas may contravene international law.

Mine-clearance specialists said densely populated southern Lebanon was blighted by thousands of unexploded bomblets, which can kill or maim if they are moved or touched. In one case this week 35 bomblets were cleared from in and around one house, while in another a woman lost her hands when a bomblet apparently became tangled in her tobacco crop.

Yesterday the United Nations official in charge of bomb disposal in southern Lebanon said his staff had identified 390 strikes by cluster munitions, and had disposed of more than 2,000 bomblets since the ceasefire.

Chris Clarke, head of the UN mine action service in southern Lebanon, said: "This is without a doubt the worst post-conflict cluster bomb contamination I have ever seen."

In a presentation at the international conference on conventional weapons in Geneva yesterday, he said that the "vast majority" of cluster bombs had been fired by the Israeli Defence Force in the final three days of the conflict, prompting campaigners to accuse the Israeli government of targeting civilian populations.

Mr Clarke, who has worked in bomb clearance in Sudan, Kosovo, Kuwait and Bosnia, said the number of confirmed strikes was "climbing every day". He said: "They are everywhere in south Lebanon. We are still looking. Pretty much the whole of south Lebanon is carpeted with these things." He predicted that specialists would take up to six months to remove the worst threat from unexploded weaponry and said full clearance could take a further year.

Speaking from Lebanon yesterday Sean Sutton, of the Mines Action Group, which has 80 staff clearing the unexploded bombs, said: "This is pretty widespread across the whole of southern Lebanon. There are literally thousands of unexploded munitions in and around the remains of people's homes and on the roads and streets."

Simon Conway, director of the British charity Landmine Action, condemned Israel's "cynical" use of the weapons. He said: "The premeditated targeting of residential areas with high failure-rate cluster munitions in the final days of the conflict means that the rubble-filled villages of southern Lebanon have been deliberately turned into minefields that will indiscriminately kill civilians for years to come."

Yesterday the charity published a report highlighting the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon and calling for an immediate international ban on their use.

Frank Cook, Labour chairman of the Commons all-party Landmine Group, added: "These weapons are totally indiscriminate. For them to be used by Israel among a civilian population is quite outrageously inexcusable."

Susan Kramer, the Liberal Democrat international development spokesman, said: "Cluster munitions need to be outlawed once and for all. Lebanon is still suffering from their use by the Israelis in 1978 and 1982."

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London insisted the country's armed forces did not target civilians. He said: "Israel does not use any weaponry that is forbidden under international law or conventions."

Unexploded hazards

Cluster bombs are designed to deliver a devastating blitz on military vehicles and troop emplacements, each device scattering hundreds of explosive "bomblets" over a wide area.

However, their use has become highly controversial, with campaigners likening them to landmines, warning that strikes can leave hundreds of deadly unexploded weapons strewn across a battlefield decades after the troops have left.

The individual devices, about the size of a tin can, can inflict severe or even fatal injuries if they are moved or handled by unsuspecting civilians returning to an affected area.

UN mine clearance experts have identified 390 strikes by Israeli cluster bombs in its recent war in Lebanon. Munitions include American-made M42 and M47 shells which each contain about 80 bomblets. UN staff have also found the remains of Israeli-manufactured M85 weapons, which are fired by rocket and contain 644 bomblets. They say that American-made cluster bombs dropped from aircraft have also been used.

Bomblets are designed to explode on impact. However, campaigners say that a high proportion fail to detonate and remain as a hazard for civilians. Experts in Lebanon say that up to half of the bomblets dropped during the recent conflict remain unexploded.


3. Rabbis: Israel Too Worried Over Civilian Deaths -- by Rebecca Spence

As international human rights organizations decry the high toll of civilian deaths suffered in the Lebanon war, America’s main organization of Modern Orthodox rabbis is calling on the Israeli military to be less concerned with avoiding civilian casualties on the opposing side when carrying out future operations.

Following a solidarity mission to Israel last week, leaders of the Rabbinical Council of America issued a statement prodding the Israeli military to review its policy of taking pains to spare the lives of innocent civilians, in light of Hezbollah’s tactic of hiding its fighters and weaponry among Lebanese civilians. Because Hezbollah “puts Israeli men and women at extraordinary risk of life and limb through unconscionably using their own civilians, hospitals, ambulances, mosques… as human shields, cannon fodder, and weapons of asymmetric warfare,” the rabbinical council said in a statement, “we believe that Judaism would neither require nor permit a Jewish soldier to sacrifice himself in order to save deliberately endangered enemy civilians.”

The directive from the Orthodox rabbi comes at a time when both Israel and Hezbollah have been subjected to intense scrutiny from the media and from international human rights organizations about the Lebanon war’s grueling impact on civilians. Israel has taken the brunt of the criticism, with the number of Lebanese civilians killed in the month-long conflict put at about 1,000.

Civilian deaths on the Israeli side, which totaled 43, were markedly lighter despite Hezbollah’s steady rain of rockets over heavily populated towns and cities in Israel’s northern region. Defenders of the Jewish state say that Israel has been unfairly blamed for Lebanese civilian deaths, which, they contend, are largely unavoidable given Hezbollah’s practice of hiding in innocent people’s homes.

Condemnation of Israel by international groups for inadvertently killing civilians when targeting terrorists “has happened in all of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, but this has brought it front and center in very clear ways that everybody now sees,” said Marc Stern, general counsel of the American Jewish Congress.

“You can’t conduct a war in Lebanon without killing civilians,” he said. Stern added that Hezbollah is part of a cadre of groups, including Hamas and the Sri Lankan rebel group Tamil Tigers, which live within the general population, making it impossible to wage war on them without attacking civilians.

At the United Nations, the Lebanon war has sparked renewed debate over the enforcement and usefulness of international humanitarian law, which governs wartime conduct. The newly assembled United Nations Human Rights Council, which replaced the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights after years of allegations that the body was ineffective and anti-Israel, recently authorized an investigation of alleged Israeli war crimes in Lebanon. The 47-member council opted not to look into war crimes on the part of Hezbollah — a decision that has prompted accusations that the council is dominated by its Islamic member states.

Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary general, has condemned civilian deaths on both sides of the conflict, and is considering opening a “commission of inquiry” under the auspices of his office that would investigate possible war crimes by both parties.

Some Jewish organizations have criticized the U.N., saying that the 192-nation group and the cohort of charities that carry out humanitarian work on a global scale place too much emphasis on laws protecting civilians. Among the aid groups criticized has been the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is charged with promoting adherence to international law.

The AJCongress sent a letter August 7 to the president of the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, assailing the international organization for its “selective reading” of international law. According to Stern, both the U.N. and the Red Cross have failed to address Hezbollah’s commingling with civilians as a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, while both international bodies continue to castigate Israel for a disproportionate military response.

At the same time, the AJCongress is waging a campaign to amend international law, which it views as out of step with fighting terrorism. In a letter sent in mid-August to the Senate Armed Service’s Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, Stern wrote that “international law, as it is currently applied by the United Nations, the Red Cross and unofficial international human rights groups, enhances the military capability of irregular forces at the direct expense of states and thus exacerbates the difficulties of nations engaged in asymmetrical warfare.” In an interview with the Forward, Stern said that given the stipulations of Additional Protocol 1 — a 1977 amendment to the Fourth Geneva Convention that, among other caveats, excuses “irregular” fighters from wearing military attire — Western nations are at a distinct disadvantage in waging wars.

As Jewish groups rush to defend Israel’s conduct in Lebanon, a feud has erupted in recent weeks between Human Rights Watch, an international organization that monitors human rights abuses, and a handful of Jewish leaders who have countered the international watchdog group’s assessment of Israel’s behavior throughout the conflict. That debate was sparked by the release in early August of “Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon,” a report by Human Rights Watch detailing more than 20 instances of Israel’s killing of civilians — including an attack on Qana, which claimed the lives of at least 28 Lebanese, among them 16 children — as the war raged during the last two weeks of July. Despite Israel’s insistence that it limited its targets to areas where Hezbollah fighters were known to be operating, the rights organization says that in the cases of civilian deaths that it investigated, no evidence emerged to suggest a Hezbollah presence.

The controversy over the Human Rights Watch report has largely played out in the editorial pages of The New York Sun, a neoconservative daily established by Seth Lipsky, the Forward’s founding editor. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, published an opinion article in the Sun chiding the human rights group for failing to consider the existential threat that Hezbollah, as an agent of Iran and Syria, poses to the Jewish state. A heated back-and-forth ensued between Kenneth Roth, the rights group’s executive director, and the newspaper, which published its own series of editorials accusing Roth of anti-Israel bias. Roth and the Sun’s managing editor, Ira Stoll, debated the issue on an episode of the television program “The O’Reilly Factor.”

Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of “The Case for Israel,” issued harsh rebukes to Human Rights Watch in opinion pieces that appeared in the Sun and on the left-leaning blog the Huffington Post. Dershowitz, who along with many Jewish communal leaders has long maintained that Human Rights Watch disproportionately singles out Israel for human rights abuses, cited examples of reporting that illustrated Hezbollah’s hiding behind civilian targets. In an interview with the Forward, Dershowitz said that Human Rights Watch has lost all credibility as a neutral organization. “Human Rights Watch has become part of the problem, not part of the solution,” he said.

Roth shot back that his critics, including Dershowitz, have mischaracterized the report. “There is a shocking lack of factual engagement by the reflexive defenders of Israel. They will focus on irrelevancies, they will twist what we said, but nobody takes on what we actually said.” According to Roth, his organization has never denied that Hezbollah places its weapons in civilian areas. “What we found was that the Israeli government’s cover story was to blame all civilian deaths on Hezbollah hiding between civilians, but it didn’t explain these deaths,” he said. Meanwhile, Roth may find support for his stance among some college and high school students affiliated with the Union for Reform Judaism, American Jewry’s largest synagogue movement. A loose coalition of 48 Reform Jews, culled from universities across the nation, earlier this month sent a letter to the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, calling on the movement to condemn the Israeli military’s “killing of unarmed Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, as well as its premeditated targeting of civilian infrastructures, which has put additional lives at risk and hampered relief efforts.”

Matt Adler, the Washington University in St. Louis liaison for Kesher, the college branch of the Reform movement, said that he circulated the letter because he felt that his views were not being voiced in his movement’s policies and public statements on the Lebanon war. “While we certainly agree with condemning Hamas and Hezbollah’s attacks, we didn’t see more of a pro-peace statement reflected,” Adler said. Adler, 20, also said that he was “thrilled” by the Reform union’s swift response. The same day that Yoffie received the students’ plea via email, he wrote a letter, saying: “No side is completely blameless in a war, but I am confident that the government of Israel has taken all reasonable precautions to avoid civilian casualties.”

In an effort to continue the dialogue, Adler said, the Union for Reform Judaism has scheduled an August 28 conference call between the signatories to his letter and the leadership of Arza, the Reform movement’s Zionist arm. “I think we’re going to see what comes out of that call for what our next steps are going to be,” he said.


4. Blinded by a Concept -- by George Soros

The failure of Israel to subdue Hezbollah demonstrates the many weaknesses of the war-on-terror concept. One of those weaknesses is that even if the targets are terrorists, the victims are often innocent civilians, and their suffering reinforces the terrorist cause.

In response to Hezbollah's attacks, Israel was justified in attacking Hezbollah to protect itself against the threat of missiles on its border. However, Israel should have taken greater care to minimize collateral damage. The civilian casualties and material damage inflicted on Lebanon inflamed Muslims and world opinion against Israel and converted Hezbollah from aggressors to heroes of resistance for many. Weakening Lebanon has also made it more difficult to rein in Hezbollah.

Another weakness of the war-on-terror concept is that it relies on military action and rules out political approaches. Israel previously withdrew from Lebanon and then from Gaza unilaterally, rather than negotiating political settlements with the Lebanese government and the Palestinian authority. The strengthening of Hezbollah and Hamas was a direct consequence of that approach. The war-on-terror concept stands in the way of recognizing this fact because it separates ``us" from ``them" and denies that our actions help shape their behavior.

A third weakness is that the war-on-terror concept lumps together different political movements that use terrorist tactics. It fails to distinguish among Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, or the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi militia in Iraq. Yet all these terrorist manifestations, being different, require different responses. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah can be treated merely as targets in the war on terror because both have deep roots in their societies; yet there are profound differences between them.

Looking back, it is easy to see where Israeli policy went wrong. When Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Israel should have gone out of its way to strengthen him and his reformist team. When Israel withdrew from Gaza, the former head of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, negotiated a six-point plan on behalf of the Quartet for the Middle East (Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations). It included opening crossings between Gaza and the West Bank, allowing an airport and seaport in Gaza, opening the border with Egypt; and transferring the greenhouses abandoned by Israeli settlers into Arab hands. None of the six points was implemented. This contributed to Hamas's electoral victory. The Bush administration, having pushed Israel to allow the Palestinians to hold elections, then backed Israel's refusal to deal with a Hamas government. The effect was to impose further hardship on the Palestinians.

Nevertheless, Abbas was able to forge an agreement with the political arm of Hamas for the formation of a unity government. It was to foil this agreement that the military branch of Hamas, run from Damascus, engaged in the provocation that brought a heavy-handed response from Israel -- which in turn incited Hezbollah to further provocation, opening a second front.

That is how extremists play off against each other to destroy any chance of political progress.

Israel has been a participant in this game, and President Bush bought into this flawed policy, uncritically supporting Israel. Events have shown that this policy leads to the escalation of violence. The process has advanced to the point where Israel's unquestioned military superiority is no longer sufficient to overcome the negative consequences of its policy. Israel is now more endangered in its existence than it was at the time of the Oslo Agreement on peace.

Similarly, the United States has become less safe since Bush declared war on terror.

The time has come to realize that the present policies are counterproductive. There will be no end to the vicious circle of escalating violence without a political settlement of the Palestine question. In fact, the prospects for engaging in negotiations are better now than they were a few months ago. The Israelis must realize that a military deterrent is not sufficient on its own. And Arabs, having redeemed themselves on the battlefield, may be more willing to entertain a compromise.

There are strong voices arguing that Israel must never negotiate from a position of weakness. They are wrong. Israel's position is liable to become weaker the longer it persists on its present course. Similarly Hezbollah, having tasted the sense but not the reality of victory (and egged on by Syria and Iran) may prove recalcitrant. But that is where the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas comes into play. The Palestinian people yearn for peace and relief from suffering. The political -- as distinct from the military -- wing of Hamas must be responsive to their desires. It is not too late for Israel to encourage and deal with an Abbas-led Palestinian unity government as the first step toward a better-balanced approach.

Given how strong the US-Israeli relationship is, it would help Israel to achieve its own legitimate aims if the US government were not blinded by the war-on-terror concept.

(George Soros, a financier and philanthropist, is author of `` The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror.”)


5. Hizbullah's Victory Has Transformed the Middle East
The defeat of the regional superpower could yet open the way to a wider settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict
by George Galloway

As the smoke clears from the battlefield of the 34-day war in Lebanon, it would be a mistake to count the cost only in fallen masonry and fresh graves. All is changed, changed utterly, by the defeat that the whole of Israel is now debating, from the cabinet through the lively press to the embittered reservists at the falafel stall. Practically the only person in the world who claims Israel won the war is George Bush - and we all know his definition of the words "mission accomplished".

Reports that the Hizbullah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, expressed regret this week at having underestimated Israel's reponse to the capture of two of its soldiers were misleading. In fact, Nasrallah thanked God that the attack came when the resistance movement was prepared, as he was convinced Israel would have otherwise invaded later in the year at a time of its choosing.

If the fierce thicket of the Iraqi resistance stopped the Bush war spreading to Syria then the extraordinary Hizbullah victory has surely made the world think again about an attack on Iran. But the main - and maybe the most welcome - shift in the 40-year-old paradigm of the Israeli-Arab conflict is the puncturing of the belief in a permanent and unchallengeable Israeli military superiority over its neighbours and the hubris this has induced in Israeli leaders - from the sleek Shimon Peres through the roughhouse of Binyamin Netanyahu to the stumbling Mr Magoo premiership of Ehud Olmert.

The myth of invincibility is a souffle that cannot rise twice. Over the past week I have picked my way through the rubble of Dahia in downtown Beirut, now resembling London's East End at the height of the blitz, and across the south of Lebanon in towns such as Bint Jbeil whose centres look as if they have been hit by an earthquake. Here the litter of banned weapons lies like a legal time bomb - evidence of war crimes alleged by the UN and Amnesty International that in a genuine system of international justice would put Israel in the dock at The Hague. This, together with the beating Israel has received in international public opinion, is the collateral damage suffered alongside military humiliation.

Israel announced the capture of Bint Jbeil several times, but in truth it never held the town - or anywhere else for that matter - throughout the war. Despite raining down thousands of tons of high explosive on homes, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, ambulances, UN posts, oil storage depots, electricity plants and virtually every petrol station south of Beirut (the bombers seemed to have a crazed thirst for petrol stations, while telling the world that they were kindly inviting the residents of south Lebanon to get into their cars and leave their homes for a little while), the Israelis were given a severe mauling by Hizbullah fighters when it came to boots on the ground.

Paradoxically, some believe that all this has blown open a window in which it is possible to glimpse the possibility of a comprehensive settlement of the near-century-old conflicts which lie behind the recent war. Now that the status quo ante has been swept away, we may even see an FW de Klerk moment emerge in Israel (and among its indispensable international backers).

The leader of the white tribes of apartheid South Africa waited until the critical mass of opposition threatened to overwhelm the position of the previously invincible minority, and sold the transfer of power on the basis that a settlement later, under more severe duress, would be less favourable. Israel's trajectory is now heading towards such a moment.

A comprehensive settlement now would of course look much like it has for decades: Israeli withdrawal from land occupied in 1967; respect for the legal rights of Palestinian refugees to return; the emergence of a real Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital - a contiguous state with an Arab border, with no Zionist settlements and military roads, and with internationally guaranteed Palestinian control over its land, air, sea and water. In exchange there would be Arab recognition, normalisation and, in time, acceptance of Israel into the Middle East as something other than a settler garrison of the imperial west.

Just as you can't be a little bit pregnant, a settlement can't be a little bit comprehensive. Attempts - like the one more than a decade ago in Oslo - to obfuscate, shave and sculpt such a package to the point of unrecognisability will founder on the new reality.

The Arab world is waking up to its potential power. It has seen the Iraqis confound Anglo-American efforts to recolonise their country, the unbreakability, whatever the cost, of the Palestinian resistance, and now the success of Hizbullah. If there is no settlement there can only be war, war and more war, until one day it is Tel Aviv which is on fire and the Israeli leaders' intransigence brings the whole state down on their heads. Nor is it only Israel that will pay the price for continued conflict: the enduring injustice of Palestinian dispossession has already poisoned western-Muslim relations and helped spill violence and hatred on to our own streets. There is still time to choose peace. But make no mistake, with the victory of Hizbullah, a terrible beauty is born.

(George Galloway is the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow www.georgegalloway.com)